My crepe dress is causing me problems. It should be a really simple pattern to put together but I seem to be intent on making it difficult. My fashion fabric is a rather sheer voile and I added a layer of white lawn under it to make things more opaque. This shouldn't really make things difficult but for some reason it did. I managed to get past most of the problems I was having with flat lining my dress and now I'm stumped by the armhole facing. It just doesn't look right. Should it really be this shape?

I found Gertie's Crepe Sew-A-Long posts which have been really helpful (why did I not look them up before?) but the point where the seam is on her facings look a little smoother than mine. I'm contemplating reshaping that area so I don't have the little V in the edge of the cap sleeve. I'm definitely going to add some interfacing. The pattern doesn't call for it but my fabric is so limp I don't think the sleeve will sit nicely without it.

My goal for today is to deal with that facing and get the bodice finished for my dress. Then I can decide if I want to use the same fabric for my sash or the pink voile I found in the stash (I'm pretty sure I've got enough). But first I'll show you what I made yesterday.

You see I've been trying to make a decision about that facing since last weekend and I've been stumped since then. I've wanted to sew but didn't know what to do with my dress and didn't want to get into a different big project - this dress needs to be finished before I move on to other things. I decided what I needed was a little project. Something very small and simple, and preferably in a light colour so I wouldn't need to rethread my machine. So here it is: an eye pillow. I've been getting headaches kind of frequently lately - it's something that often happens to me when the weather is changing - and I thought a nice little pillow full of lavender would be perfect for those times when I just want to lie still and keep out the light.

Would you believe I actually started out searching for instructions in my craft books? I'd looked through three of them without finding anything and was wondering what I was going to do when I suddenly realized that … um … I probably don't need instructions to sew a rectangle and put some lavender in it. I measured my face to determine how big it would be and cut out some rectangles. The front is a double gauze from Heather Ross's Far, Far Away line (and just so cute), the back is a pink flannel that matched the frog fabric and there is a muslin pillow on the inside to stop the lavender bits from poking through. When I was hunting around for some lavender I found a pouch that also included some rose buds and smelled particularly nice so that is what's inside my pillow, along with some flax seed to give it some weight. I may have over stuffed it a little bit but I thought I'd wait 'till I'd used it a few times to decide.

I said I'd finished a sundress on the weekend and here - with the help of my tripod and handy-dandy remote - it is.

I still call this April's dress even though March's isn't finished yet (it's cut out). It's very comfortable. I used the Mendocino sundress pattern and two layers of cotton voile (Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks). I love this fabric. When we went to Victoria at the beginning of April I was really excited about getting to visit one of my favourite quilting shops - The Satin Moon - and secretly hoping I'd be able to get a couple of voiles for this dress. I especially wanted pinks, one print and one solid, and they had just what I was looking for. In fact that's all they had left!

I used French seams to sew the sides of both layers and left out the pockets entirely. This fabric is too lightweight to handle having anything in the pockets anyway. I sewed the two layers together at the top of the dress with a regular seam since the raw edges are contained by the shirring. The shirring took a while. I probably could have spaced my lines a little further apart - half an inch instead of a quarter - but they give such a nice snug fit. The spaghetti straps were sewn in place by hand afterwards.

The hem may be one of my favourite features of this dress. I wanted the skirt to feel as light as possible so I … um … didn't hem it. When I cut out the pieces I measured the length of the Mendocino dress I made last year and cut this one to match. I did some controlled fraying to the raw edges and then let them be. It was a lot faster than doing two rolled hems and feels really lovely and floaty. I may trim the lining to be a little shorter than the printed fabric but for now they are the same length.

I spent a lovely chunk of yesterday afternoon working on one of my dresses. It's the dress I was planning to make in April so even though it is now June and I haven't yet sewn together my dress for March I'm calling it April's dress. When it's all done it will be a Mendocino sundress. It was going pretty quickly yesterday (especially with my chosen hem style) but sadly I ran out of my top thread a third of the way through the bodice gathers and need to get a new spool. I was supposed to do that after work today but completely forgot and got milk instead (we needed milk too). I think I'll email myself a reminder to receive when I get to work tomorrow morning.